Postcards from Mississippi

I’m in Mississippi as a guest of the Visit the Delta tourism board. Nearly all my travel expenses are paid for.

I must have looked somewhat disoriented because he asked me if I was visiting. He then went on a tear about the airport. Memphis was a Northwest hub once, then Delta, but it’s been “de-hubbed” and now, everything goes to Atlanta. “That place is a zoo,” I said, and he agreed, and continued to rant — not in an unfriendly way — about Memphis and all the empty gates and why on earth did they park us at the one furthest from the terminal, they don’t care about people. He was a rumpled suit of a guy, tired looking, but kind, and he told me I’d need to go all the way to the end of the terminal and then some to fetch my rental car. A younger man stopped my companion to shake his hand, and we continued on our way.

“Are you some kind of visiting dignitary?” I asked

“Kind of.”

“What’s your job?”

“I’m a Congressman.”

I looked him up when I stopped for dinner at the Waffle House where the waitress, who could not have been much past twenty, called me sugar, honey, sweetheart, darlin’, and baby. “You doin’ all right? Can I get you some more coffee, baby?”

His name? Steve Cohen and he’s the representative from Memphis.

§

“I don’t think I’ve ever had fried green tomatoes.”

I was having breakfast at the Blue and White, a roadside diner that’s been in the same location since 1937 — before that, it was on the old Route 61, closer to the railway. When I made this confession, there was a collective gasp in the restaurant, everyone who could hear me was horrified.

“Where are you from?” asked the woman behind me. “I mean, sorry, I don’t mean to be eavesdropping, but…”

“Welcome to the best part of the country,” said her husband. His name was Mike, he shook my hand.

“Can you get her some fried green tomatoes?” my host — Webster Franklin from the local tourism board — asked the waitress.

“Let me see what I can do,” she said, and she reappeared about five minutes later with a plate holding two golden brown slices of tomato breaded in cornmeal batter and dropped in the fryer.

They were delicious.

§

“Can you imagine catching a fish like that?”

“Honestly, no. No I can not. Eating it, maybe, but catching it? No.”

“I’d love to hook a fish like that. But I gotta tell you, they’re no good for food. You do everything you can to them, soak them and cover them in sauce and stew them and whatever, and they’re just tough and greasy. No good.”

The Riverpark Museum has a few big tanks with fish and reptiles that live in the Delta, and Lee Otis cares for them. He was changing the water out in the big fish tank that held catfish and bass and some other things I didn’t recognize. I was the only visitor that morning and Mr. Lee Otis and I watched clean water pour into the tank from above. He pointed out the little alligator warming himself under a heat lamp and the giant snapping turtle snoozing in the lower front corner of the next tank. “He don’t get out of the water much, he just sometimes rests his chin there on that snag, but he’s too big and too slow to get out of the water.”

He asked me what I was doing, where I was going. We chatted for a few minutes more, “You’ll like Vicksburg,” he said, “That’s a nice town.” He shook my hand, his big hand was warm. “You be safe out there on the road,” he said, and went back to tend to his fish.

§

I’d checked in to the Shack Up Inn. The front room — where there’s live music some nights — was full of a circle of guitar players, there are workshops here sometimes and I showed up during the afternoon lesson.

“Are you sure you haven’t been here before?” asked the guy who handed me my keys.

“Nope.”

“You look familiar.”

“Maybe I belong here,” I said.

“We’ve got bagels and cream cheese starting at eight,” he said, in a long slow Mississippi drawl. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. I’ll be hearing that statement in my head — delivered in just like that, looooong and slooooow — for a good time to come.

It was cold, a lot colder than I packed for and I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I wanted to take a nap. But the wind would rattle the torn screen against the glass and shake the tin roof (rusted) and I didn’t get more than ten minutes of true rest. For a while there, it felt like I might open the door and find myself in Oz. Plus, there was the ghost of harmonica coming from somewhere. I walked around the two room shack and looked out all the windows to see if I could find out where it was coming from, but I couldn’t see anyone. So I gave up and went to the bar for catfish tacos and beer.

§

I think I understand Faulkner now.